This would, in theory, remove the incentives to tank once a team can no longer make the playoffs, while still ensuring that the worst teams (who are eliminated earlier) maintain their high draft positions. It got noticed - by Oilers fans and followers, to no surprise - and debated, but I wondered what would actually happen under such a system.

We can't look at Edmonton's results last year after being eliminated and conclude anything, because they had no incentive to win those games. In fact, Gold shows that teams who are eliminated go from winning 45% of their games to just 28% - clearly, they wouldn't try to lose nearly three-quarters of the time if wins were rewarded instead of losses.

But even if we had the right conditions to use last year's data, or a couple of years, we'd still be at the whims of random variation. Anything can happen in 82 games, and that's all the more true in the five or 10 games a team plays after being eliminated.

So we have to try something else: we're going to play a million seasons.

SETUP

We'll go through every game from last year's schedule and assign a winner and loser. In 24.3% of the games in the last three years, the losing team has received a point (i.e., the game has gone to at least overtime), and in 13.9% of all games, the result was decided by a shootout. In shootout games, we'll decide the winner by coin toss, and award points accordingly. For all other games, including those decided in OT, we'll figure out the winner based on the two teams' SRS, as well as the standard home-ice advantage in the NHL.

Before each game during a season, we'll check if either team is already eliminated and if so, we'll keep track of their games played, wins, and points after being eliminated. Then the team with the most wins after elimination receives the first overall pick, and so on down the line. And we'll repeat all of that one million times to smooth out the inevitable randomness.

But when is a team eliminated? That's a crucial question. To simplify matters here, we'll say a team is eliminated when they can no longer surpass (in total points) the eighth-place team in their conference. This isn't quite true but close enough for our purposes. A team may still be alive, technically, if they're 10 points back with five left to play, but that requires at least a five-game win streak and a five-game pointless streak (insert joke here about the Islanders having season-long pointless streaks). Which is very unlikely.

Of course, there are going to be unintended consequences if this system ever takes over, many of which we won't know until they happen. A team that knows they won't make the playoffs could tank before they're officially eliminated, get eliminated very early, then go nuts with the "draft points." In some ways, that's the exact same scenario we have already -- the tanking is moved from March/April to October/November. Every year we see teams who aren't mathematically eliminated but have no realistic chance at a playoff spot. How do we know they don't give up before being eliminated, once they realize it means a slightly better chance at that #1 pick?

RESULTS

The first column is how often this team made the playoffs in our 1,000,000 replays of 2011-12, and the second is their average number of points overall (in all 82 games). The third column is how many games they played, on average, after being eliminated (GAE), and the fourth is how many wins they averaged after being eliminated (WAE) in those seasons (which is what we're sorting by).

The last column is how often they would receive the first overall pick outright (ignoring years where teams tied for the first draft spot).

Some teams did notably better or worse last year than in these simulated seasons, such as Edmonton or Columbus, which we can interpret to mean those two teams had somewhat unlucky years.

What's encouraging about these results is they imply that this new system would maintain the entire reason to have a draft (distribute new talent to encourage parity) while removing its current worst feature (Fail for Nail, Stop Winnin' For MacKinnon, etc.). Half the time, the first pick would go to one of the four worst teams -- CBJ, MIN, NYI, TBL. Almost never does a 9th or 10th-place team receive it.

So the bad teams still pick earlier, but now they'd actually have to earn that pick. I can get behind that.

DISCUSSION

This wouldn't be the way the entire draft order is determined -- only the first 14 teams can be ordered based on "points after elimination", obviously, and the rest are done with playoff advancement. But it has almost the same teams in the top 14 as the actual 2012 order did: only Florida didn't originally have a draft pick in the top 14 this year, and they of course made the playoffs.

The Oilers and Canadiens would likely not be very happy about this new system, should the results above hold in reality. The Habs fell to last in the East this year but weren't as bad, really, as the Hurricanes, Jets, Leafs, Lightning, and a bunch of other teams who picked after they did. Given how close the bottom of the East was, Montreal certainly wouldn't always finish last if we played 2011-12 over again.

Edmonton's a little different: they were undeniably a very bad team, but because their SRS was better than Minnesota and Columbus they were eliminated a few games later on average in these million seasons, after 4.5 games instead of 8.2 or 7.2. And with three games in hand, those other teams could obviously accumulate more points.

Which leads us to a big problem under this new system: determining when exactly a team is eliminated is not nearly as easy as it sounds. There's a reason we simplified the process above. If there are more than a handful of games left, it actually requires complicated mathematical gymnastics (or some effort equivalent to that) to be completely accurate. Gold brings up the word "combinatorics" in his talk and he's right to do so.

It's not just a nitpicky problem, either. Adding an extra game to any team's post-elimination schedule could change these standings. As an example, Edmonton had 32 wins in 82 games (in their actual results), or 0.39 per game. If we mistakenly identified them as being eliminated one game earlier than they really were, their average of 2.1 wins after elimination here would be inflated to a 2.5 - enough to vault them from sixth to fourth. Two more games would mean 0.8 more wins, or enough to overtake Minnesota for second.

And this shift one way or the other could happen with anyone. A team would probably accept losing the No. 1 pick if it's taken away in a random draft lottery where the probabilities are known to all, but not when it's taken way by some mathematician in a back office somewhere, regardless of the accuracy of that person's work.

You could probably avoid this problem by announcing officially every morning who has been eliminated, so all teams have the same information and there's no ambiguity. Columbus or whoever could argue they should already be eliminated, but if they know they're not, at least they're aware of the situation and it's not decided after the fact.

CONCLUSION

So it may work or it may not work. There's a lot that could happen that we can't anticipate. We can say that this new system will probably not change the order significantly - bad teams first, mediocre teams later, playoff teams last - and that it would remove the need to balance winning against draft picks. (Presumably, this would also remove the draft lottery, which is no longer needed to guard against the worst tanking.)

Besides, if two teams were tied in the draft standings and were playing each other in Game 82, you don't think that would be an outstanding game to watch? That might be enough reason to adopt this system right there.

Rob Pettapiece is a sports analyst based out of southern Ontario. He edits The CIS Blog and provides statistical consulting services to front offices and journalists in various sports. He can be reached at rob.pettapiece at gmail dot com or @RobPettapiece.

At first glance I thought this was a great idea, as introducing this "Gold Rule" would force teams to quit-quitting.

But in effect, this method would only really reward the "best of the bad" teams, whereas a draft is meant to aid struggling teams.

Consider this. If a team is in fact a real bad team, and can't win even when they try, they won't likely be able to accumulate many points after mathematical elimination, even with a 16-game-or-so head start.

If said real bad team is surpassed in post-elimination accumulated points by the best of the bad teams, the real bad team will slide to the middle of the pack in the overall draft order. I hope that wasn't too confusing.

Since the bad team will only be rewarded with a middle of the pack pick, it will have no method to rebuild with other than through trades and free agency. Trading won't be much of a viable option for rebuilding though since any real bad teams won't likely have many assets on their roster to offer and, due to potential years of middle of the pack picks, likely wont have the prospects required to attract trade offers either.

One other issue is that the incentive to win is an incentive for the organization, not the players.

The players don't care that much about getting a different draft pick, but their effort probably dips after elimination since they have nothing to play for that season other than stats. They don't really care about trying to win games for a better draft pick.

Granted, this would still have some effect on team strategy and coaching and who gets put in the lineup, but I doubt you'll be eliminating the post-elimination dropoff in Win % much.

sounds ok t the beginning, but players rally don't care what number you are drafting at, specially if you wont be there next season... so why care about team's long term success? it's ok as it is because of simplicity.